“Spiritist Doctrine” or “Spiritism”: name given by Allan Kardec to the Doctrine of the contained in the works of the Codification.

• “For new ideas new words are needed in order to secure clearness of language by avoiding the confusion inseparable from the employment of the same term for expressing different meanings. The words spiritual, spiritualist, spiritualism, have a definite acceptation; to give them a new one, would be to multiply the causes of amphibology, already so numerous.”

• “Instead, therefore, of the words spiritual, spiritualism, we employ, to designate this latter belief, the words spiritist and spiritism to better designate the latter belief . . ..”

• “We say, then, that the fundamental principles of the spiritist theory or Spiritism, is the relationship of the material world with Spirits, or the beings of the invisible world; and we designate the adherents of the spiritist theory as spiritists.”

• “In a special sense, The Spirits’ Book contains the doctrine or theory of spiritism; in a general sense, it appertains to the spiritualist school . . ..”
Allan Kardec
(“The Spirits’ Book” - Introduction – I)